“Our three primary customers are the
seller, the buyer and the broker, but the
broker is really running the process,”
Waters says. “We’re basically providing the
tool and engine to help them drive that
transaction in the market faster, and help
them in the process of matching buyers
and sellers.” Along with speed and transparency, the platform offers the advantage
of understanding customer behaviors, thus
helping to match buyers and sellers
“through algorithms that help us understand” what each party is seeking.

When Auction.com announced its
rebranding as Ten-X in January 2016, it was
powered by the Live Bid solution, which
primarily focuses on middle-market transactions between $2 million and $25 million, although the $96-million sale of a
Manhattan Beach, CA office property had
been completed prior to the rebranding.
March of last year saw the Ten-X
Commercial marketplace ramp up with the
introduction of two new transaction methods: Managed Bid and Offer Select.

The former, says Jacobs, is similar to Live
Bid, except that it’s designed for “sellers
that may want to mitigate some of the risk
in terms of who is stepping up to buy their
assets.” For transactions that are larger
than the range normally suggested for Live
Bid, potential buyers need “various credit
committee approvals. They can’t just participate in a live bid, win it and go hard.

“The sellers want to make sure that thebuyers who register are fully vetted, havethe financing approved and really canclose,” he explains. “All of our buyers forLive Bid are vetted, but it’s a lot easier toget your funds together for a $7-milliondeal as opposed to a $70-million one.”From the buyer’s perspective, Managed Bidis also well suited to properties that are “alittle complicated” and require a deeperdive when it comes to due diligence.

In contrast, Offer Select does not operate via auctions. “It’s the traditional offline
process, which we’ve brought online,” says
Jacobs. “It allows buyers, sellers and brokers
to communicate online through the entire
process.” Offer Select allows sellers to set
their list price and terms, and buyers may
make offers online. The process is designed
to provide all parties with enhanced transparency, efficiency and control.

User-friendliness has been built into theTen-X experience. “Amazon has set anexample for us,” says Waters. Just as a shop-per can quickly place an order from aphone or desktop and find their package attheir door within the next few hours, theTen-X platform strived for the same ease ofuse. “And we have incorporated a lot offeedback to continue making it easier.”From the vantage point of a Ten-X dash-board, a user can quickly understand thestatus of a listed transaction. “It’s full trans-parency that helps us develop a comfortlevel,” and also has encouraged adoptionof the platform in an industry that hasbeen slower than others in embracing tech-nology, says Waters.

Although the solutions are designed to
complement one another, Ten-X may
advise on which of the three might be best
suited to the needs of a particular seller on
a particular property. “Each one has its own
dynamics, so we can meet everybody’s
needs,” says Jacobs.

Ease of use and clear communication
are just two of the advantages touted by
Ten-X. Another is the avoidance of retrades,
thanks to due diligence that occurs up
front. “When a contract is signed in the

180-day world, the seller and broker sit
back, cross their fingers and hope the buyer
decides to move forward, because those
contracts are contingent on the due diligence period,” Jacobs says.

For both the Live Bid and Managed Bid
processes, “we have a data room on the
asset from day one, with all of the due diligence materials, rent rolls and easement
agreements that the seller has provided to
us,” explains Jacobs. “We also perform an
update on any environmental report that is
more than a year old, at our own cost. We
do an updated property condition and title
reports, so that they can see right from
launch that there’s no existing title issue.

“We provide all of this up-front to our
buyers, so the buyers do their due diligence while we’re out marketing,” he says.

“All of the due diligence is done before wehave a Live Bid event.” No further duediligence occurs after the buyer makes thewinning bid, and the seller is not exposedto retrades because the buyer isn’t able todo any—a hard, non-refundable contractis signed the same day.Jacobs saw this process in action first-hand as a customer: before joining Ten-Xthis past March, he handled the internaldisposition efforts at CWCapital. As manag-ing director, he witnessed $9 billion oftransactions over a four-and-a-half-yearperiod, “and nine out of 10 trades in the180-day world come back with a retrade ora no-sale,” he recalls. “You’re alwaysexposed. But when I used the Ten-X plat-form, that risk was eradicated.” He com-pleted about $6 billion of that $9 billion indispositions through the Ten-X platform.While acknowledging that some brokersmay still believe online marketplaces repre-sent a threat to their livelihoods, Waterssays this is less the case now than comparedto a few years ago. “As we continue to formpartnerships with brokers and work closelywith them to build tools that make theirlives easier, they’ve embraced it,” she says.The speed and transparency of a salesprocess in which the due diligence occursprior to the trade aren’t the only advantagesfor brokers. “Having spent a lot of my careerrunning the marketing at Cushman &Wakefield, I would say we make that processvery easy” at Ten-X, says Waters. “Frombeginning to end, we handle both the tradi-tional marketing and the digital. It’s free ofcharge to all our customers, but for brokers,it’s particularly advantageous because itamplifies their marketing reach with noadditional cost. That’s a key differentiatorfor us and it helps the expedite the process.”For good or bad, many

people are living a
significant portion of their
lives on their phones. So it
just makes sense for
commercial real estate to
move online.”